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Chapter 16

Stealing Audience

Influencer marketing is getting others to share your story, generate interest, and make your case.

ARDATH ALBEE

The majority of marketing professionals might call this chapter “influencer marketing,” but I’d rather just tell it like it is. The goal of building a relationship with an influencer (defined as “the place where the people in your audience are hanging out on the web if they are not on your site”) is to steal the influencer’s audience and make it yours (I say this in the nicest way possible).

Right now, the people who make up your audience are not just standing around waiting for your content. They are actively involved and engaged in mobile, video, audio, and textual content for informational or entertainment purposes. If you are going to break through, you need to take that attention and direct it toward your content (not an easy task).

This chapter is all about helping you do just that: steal audience!

MAKING THE CASE

This method of tapping into influencers to help amplify your content is otherwise known as “influencer marketing.” It’s a pretty straightforward concept when you think about it: Influencers have a preestablished audience that is already receptive to their ideas and recommendations; they are valued by your target audience.

Influencers have a built-in level of trust with their readers. The hope is, these influencers will forge these strong connections on your behalf and help you build credibility.

They can help you create the right content that really meets your consumers’ needs, because they have “on-the-ground” experience and perspective.

By partnering with them, you’re able to get your content and messaging out in the right way, at the right time, to the right people.

The ultimate goal is to build and expand your own audience.

WHAT’S YOUR GOAL?

Just as you need a strategy for your Content Inc. program, you also need a strategy for your influencer marketing program. Before launching your influencer program, you need to clearly understand and document what you specifically want to accomplish. Said another way: How will your influencer program help you achieve your business goals, and how will it lead to audience building?

Some potential objectives to consider or use as a starting point to build your own list of goals: Brand awareness. How many people viewed, downloaded, or listened to this piece of content because of the influencer?

Engagement. How resonant is this content, and how often is it shared with others? How is the influencer helping to increase sharing?

Lead generation. How is the influencer helping to convert people into valuable subscribers?

Sales. Did you make money because of this content shared by the influencer? What revenue or ROI can you apply to this program? (See Chapter 22.) Customer retention and loyalty. How can an influencer help retain a customer?

Up-sell or cross-sell. Is there a way to use an influencer to help someone become more invested in your business?

IDENTIFY INFLUENCER TYPES

The type of influencer you need depends on your specific objective. For example, if your aim is awareness and a broad reach, you may choose a bigger number of influencers to work with who can all produce “bite-sized” pieces of content to increase your share of voice. But if you are looking to retain customers or up-sell, you may want to use other clients as influencers.

How Can You Identify the Right Influencers?

Influencers can come in many different forms. From inside your organization outward, they can take the form of: Bloggers

Customers

Members of a purchasing group

Industry experts and analysts

Business partners

Internal team members or experts

Media sites

From these groups you will form your influencer “hit list” (see “Build Your Hit List of Influencers” below).

HOW TO MANAGE THE PROGRAM

Now that you’ve established what you’re trying to achieve with your influencer marketing program and whom you’d ideally like to reach, you will have a better understanding of whether or not you have the right resources in-house to do the work needed. Some things to consider: How much capacity does your internal team have for taking on a pilot group of influencers?

Do you have any tools available in-house (ones you use for social listening, content management, etc.) that you can leverage for an influencer marketing program? See the sidebar “Influencer Listening Tools” for suggestions.

Influencer Listening Tools

• Klout (to find and score influencers)

• Little Bird (to find influencers)

• Google Alerts (to identify incoming content based on keywords) • Traackr (to find and form influencer relationships)

• Tap Influence (to find registered influencers open to partnership possibilities) When you fully understand your internal capabilities, you’ll be able to determine what size program you can manage and identify what other resources you’ll need to engage to deploy the program that will meet your objectives.

CREATE CONTENT WORTH SHARING

In order to get influencers to work with you, to truly partner with you, in amplifying your content, you’re going to need something crucial: compelling and relevant content. Time and time again, influencers will push back on brands for forcing overly promotional messages into their hard-earned sites, because authenticity is the piece that keeps trust between them and their readers, and no one—not even your brand—is worth jeopardizing that. So, in short, as perfectly stated by Andy Newbom, “Create something for influencers to influence on.” BUILD YOUR HIT LIST OF INFLUENCERS

Does your influencer marketing program ever feel like a spiraling rabbit hole? It’s because there are so many potential paths you can take, and the potential pool size of influencers to tap into can feel somewhat overwhelming. Here’s what typically runs through an entrepreneur’s mind when beginning to launch such a program: Whom do we even reach out to?

How do I know “who’s good” and who has powerful influence?

How do I even manage influencers once I start working with them?

These unknowns can feel daunting for any team, of any size and any level of experience. To help get you started, these are the next three steps: 1. Build a small pool of potential partners and learn more about them.

1. Begin your influencer outreach.

2. Test, assess, and optimize.

The first thing to do in building your pool of influencers, after setting your objectives and identifying the influencer “types” with whom you want to work, is to sit back and listen. Sounds pretty passive, but taking the time to truly understand what your potential influencer’s focal points are will be crucial in understanding how you can work together.

To start, consider building a template that will help you keep track of the top people with whom you’d like to work. It’s likely you already have some kind of list, but having a consistent way to keep track of them and assess them is an important place to start.

If you use a tool like Klout or other social ranking tool, you can include that score. Other times, your scoring can be a little bit more “gut based” as you read through the influencers’ work. Which brings up a very important part of this process: read your potential influencers’ work! Read their articles, see how they respond to comments, review their tweets, and really get a sense of what matters most to them. To gauge the level and extent of their influence, you can also see who is responding to their work and following them—all good things to incorporate in your spreadsheet as well (these people could be potential influencers, too).

WAYS TO IDENTIFY POTENTIAL INFLUENCERS

Amanda Maksymiw from Lattice Engines suggests these steps to build your list of influencers: Use your listening tools to identify people talking about certain topics based on keywords.

Ask your customers or others in your industry (never underestimate the power of word of mouth).

Search on social media platforms, especially LinkedIn.

Network like crazy. Attend events in different areas—get out of your bubble. Talk to customers, partners and sales.

Ask peers in your marketing, product development or sales teams.

Ask other influencers. You’d be surprised as to how many of your top tier influencers work together and recommend each other.

Get involved in the forums and discussion boards/groups discussing your content. Joining Twitter parties, webinars and even reading through the latest industry reports or blog posts can quickly make you aware of who the key players are in your space.

HOW MANY INFLUENCERS SHOULD I ADD TO MY POOL?

The answer to this question will depend heavily on how you respond to the “How to Manage the Program” section above. But to start, and for efficiency purposes, most people tend to lean toward 5 to 10 influencers as a reasonable and manageable starting point.

BEGIN OUTREACH

Once you’ve identified a potential pool of influencers and you’ve spent enough time reading through their work to want to take the next step toward outreach, take a few minutes to consider the following: How will you reach out to this person?

What can you offer that is valuable?

What exactly are you looking for from this relationship?

This is where all that time spent reviewing the person’s work will pay off; sending a generic, impersonal request to a top-tier influencer may end up sounding pretty insulting. And remember, this is a two-way relationship; gone are the days where companies could throw money or samples at bloggers and expect them to fawn over the brand. Influencers have the ability to be much more selective, and they expect to be respected for the talent (and audience) they bring to your projects.

SOCIAL MEDIA 4-1-1

Social Media 4-1-1 is a sharing system first presented by Andrew Davis that enables a company to get greater visibility with social influencers. I recommend using this as a first-approach method before directly e-mailing an influencer. Here’s how it works.

For every six pieces of content shared via social media (such as Twitter): Four are pieces of content from your influencer target that are also relevant to your audience. This means that 67 percent of the time you are sharing content that is not yours—and calling attention to content from your influencer group.

One piece can be your original, educational piece of content.

One piece can be your sales piece, such as a coupon, product notice, or press release.

While the numbers don’t have to be exact, it’s the philosophy that makes this work. When you share the content of influencers, they notice. And you should share without asking for anything in return (for a month or so), so that when you do need something someday, the influencers are more likely to say yes.

The key to making this work is consistency. Take your pilot list of 5 to 10 influencers and share each influencer’s content at least once a day for a month.

MAKING THE FIRST CONNECTION

There are a few ways you can start to make connections with your target influencers: Give them some social media love, either through a reply, retweet, or mention (use the Social Media 4-1-1 plan).

Provide thoughtful comments on their blog posts.

Connect with them on LinkedIn, introducing yourself and explaining why you’d like to connect.

Shoot over an e-mail. If you want to go the e-mail route, Figure 16.1 offers an example.

Figure 16.1 Sample of a possible e-mail sent to an influencer.

The key for your outreach is not to seem like you’re asking for a favor, but rather to suggest a collaboration in some form that takes into account the person’s skills first, with your needs secondary.

NURTURE INFLUENCER RELATIONSHIPS

After you’ve started making connections with your targeted influencers, you may feel more comfortable asking to work together in different ways, such as: Requesting that they cocreate content with you

Requesting custom content created exclusively for your platforms Asking influencers to share your content on their platforms

Here are some potential projects to engage your new influencers to work on with you: 1. Ask for a quote for an article.

1. Request to speak at a conference.

2. Ask to join or be a guest on a Twitter chat or webinar.

3. Provide a quote for an e-book.

4. Gather responses on a specific topic for a crowdsourced blog post.

5. Request permission to share or link to their content. (You don’t have to request it, but it’s polite and will certainly show that you’re interested.) 7. Request information or data for a case study.

6. Ask to write a guest blog post or feature in one.

7. Include them in an expert panel at an industry event.

8. Ask to be a guest on a podcast or Google Hangout.

HOW FAR CAN YOUR CONTENT GO?

One thing to consider is the scalability of the content that you are creating together. Just as you execute with your Content Inc. strategy, your influencer program needs legs that extend beyond a single point-in-time campaign (see Chapter 13 on repurposing). For example: Consider rounding up monthly guest blog posts into quarterly e-books.

If you’ve had a series of influencers host webinars or podcasts, gather those into robust resource guides.

Put together a collection of quotes or insights from your influencers and consolidate them into best practices articles or roundtable posts.

ASSESS AND OPTIMIZE THE PROGRAM

Although it will take time and effort on your part, eventually you get to a place with your influencers where a true relationship exists. Asking for content sharing will no longer feel like a favor because you put in the effort to show that you truly respect and value their contributions beyond just their audience reach. Now is the time to throw in some goodwill “relationship-building” efforts to further solidify your loyalty. For example, you can invite your influencers to an exclusive event, ask for input on a new product or service before anyone else, crowdsource ideas with them as a “pilot” group, or send them small tokens of appreciation (like a gift card for coffee) or handwritten thank you notes.

These actions will make them feel as valued and unique as you already know they are (and it never hurts to remember their birthdays, too).

MEASURING THE PROGRAM

Here’s an idea of how to set up your KPIs (key performance indicators) depending on the objectives you established at the onset of your program: Regardless of what you choose to measure, be on the lookout for areas of potential improvement, especially in the beginning. No program is perfect, and the ability to grow a truly robust influencer marketing program takes a lot of time and effort. By showing more than just your superficial successes, you’ll demonstrate the thoughtfulness you put behind growing these working relationships into something meaningful for your company. It’s not always pretty and, like any relationship, can mean some “give-and-take” for everyone involved. But in the end, these strong voices, projecting your company messages for you, without solicitation, will have an ROI that far exceeds many of the other programs in your marketing mix.

CASE STUDY: CONTENT MARKETING INSTITUTE

CMI defines an influencer as a blogger, competitor, or media organization that is creating content of interest for our target audience.

To give these influencers visibility, we rate our influencer list quarterly in our “Top 42 Content Marketing Blogs.” Initially, this list was made up of influencers we found by tracking keywords (like “content marketing”) in Google Alerts, authors in industry trade publications, those that were talking about the topic on Twitter, and other bloggers that we just found interesting. The initial list included 42 influencers.

Getting the Attention of Influencers

Influencers are important people. They generally have real jobs and are extremely active on social networks, spending their time sharing content and blogging. Getting on their radar is not easy. So to get their attention, we gave away content gifts. We did this in a few different ways.

First, we used the Social Media 4-1-1 method as described above. We executed this program for months. The CMI team tracked our “top content marketing blogger” list. We then decided we could get better visibility with influencers by actually ranking them publicly and sharing the rankings with the masses. This was an incredible success.

We hired an outside research expert to put together a methodology of how to rank the top bloggers, looking at areas such as consistency, style, helpfulness, originality, and a few other details. Then each quarter, CMI would publicize the list, showcase the top 10, send out a press release, and make a big deal out of it. Needless to say, the top 10 and the honored top 42 loved the list. Not only did most of this influencer group share the list with their audiences; approximately half of the top 42 influencers placed our widget (with personal rank of that particular influencer) on their home page, linking back to our site. So not only were we building long-term relationships with these influencers, but we were getting credible links and traffic as well.

In addition to the top bloggers list, CMI started to put together large educational e-books showcasing the influencers’ work. For example, in 2009 and again in 2011, we launched the Content Marketing Playbook. The playbook included over 40 case studies about content marketing, with many coming directly from our influencers. We made sure to note in the playbook which examples came from which influencers.

When we released the playbook and let the influencers know about the publication, the majority of influencers we highlighted in the playbook eagerly shared the content with their audiences. It’s important to note that all the information we shared in the publication was either “fair use” material and properly cited or used with the influencer’s permission.

Since then, most of the people on our original influencer list have become active contributors in the CMI community. Some started writing blog posts, others participated in our weekly Twitter chats, others became speakers at our events, and still others went on to write books and e-books for us. And maybe the best part, half of our original top 10 influencers are now good friends of mine. Needless to say, it’s been an incredible success.

Who says stealing doesn’t pay?

CONTENT INC. INSIGHTS

You need subscribers, and influencers that share your content can help you get those.

Most businesses that leverage an influencer strategy don’t have a defined process behind it. When you execute your influencer strategy, do it with a defined group and cadence of content sharing.

When starting an influencer strategy, you need to share more influencer content than your own content to make maximum impact.